For all Zeke’s toughness and competence, Dani was struck by how thoughtful and perceptive a man he was. That comforted her. With all her confusion and anger-the mind-numbing mix of emotions brought on by the last few days-she appreciated that gentle side of his spirit. But she didn’t want to look to him for answers, for a cure for what she was feeling. And there were the questions about his brother and the gold key, questions about her mother. About her father lying in a Saratoga hospital. She needed to call him, find out how he was doing.

Zeke pointed at her with his fork. “You’d better eat.”

She looked at him, suddenly grateful for his solid presence. “Thank you.”

He grinned, sexy, irreverent. “I can scramble an edible meal together on short order.”

“I’m not thanking you for the cooking,” Dani said, “but for talking.”

She didn’t think it was his long suit, but that was fine. These days, listening didn’t seem to be hers.

After dinner Dani popped on Tiger’s Eye, the movie that had transformed her grandmother from an overnight sensation into a true star. When people thought of her, they tended to think of the woman in Tiger’s Eye, young and sexy and beautiful-so incredibly beautiful-and still a little vulnerable, a little awed. Dani and anyone else who’d come to know her grandmother in her “retirement” had had to reconcile the eccentric, independent, mature Mattie Witt with this glamorous movie star.

Now Dani had another Mattie Witt to bring into her understanding of her grandmother, the young woman who’d freed herself from her strict, unbending father. She tried to imagine Mattie’s childhood in the stifling, repressive household of Jackson Witt, to imagine her leaving behind her eleven-year-old sister. Had that been an act of courage or selfishness-or simple desperation?

Because Mattie had left Cedar Springs, Joe and Zeke Cutler had gone to Saratoga, and now, twenty-five years later, Zeke was back.

Tucking her feet up under her on the big comfy chair, Dani lowered the volume with her remote. Zeke was standing at her living-room window, looking down at the courtyard.

“There’s so much I didn’t know,” she said.

He glanced back, his eyes reaching hers, but he said nothing. In trying to imagine Mattie’s life in Cedar Springs, Dani had also tried to imagine his. But she and Zeke were from two different worlds, brought together by the life of a woman Dani loved but no longer was sure she understood. And where did her mother fit in? Where did Zeke’s brother?

She had to know.

On the television screen, the Mattie Witt of fifty years ago smiled, the red ostrich plume in her hair.

“Mattie never mentioned the book on your brother to me. It won a Pulitzer, but I’d never read it-I’d never even heard of it.”

“You were just a kid when it came out.”

“Fifteen. It didn’t seem so young then. I don’t know, I’ve always half believed my childhood ended when I was nine. After my mother disappeared, I thought I could take anything. I guess I thought that was what everyone else believed, too. But now I see there were those who tried to protect me. My Chandler grandfather, for one. And Mattie.” She pulled her gaze from her young, dazzling grandmother and turned it on Zeke. “Did Nick know you and your brother were in Saratoga?”

“You should talk to him about that.”

“It breaks one of your rules?”

“More than one, I imagine.”

She dropped her feet to the floor, her impatience instantly reignited. “Zeke, you know more than you’re telling me.”

He didn’t even turn his head from the window.

“I have a right to know-”

He faced her. “It’s not a question of rights.”

It was as if someone had wiped the humor and fatigue and gentleness from his face, the qualities she’d seen over dinner that drew her to this complex man more than the muscles in his shoulders-which were impressive-and the sexy figure he cut in a pair of jeans. Now he looked distant and professional.

Her muscles tightened against another onslaught of shaking from anger and frustration-and fear.

He didn’t react. “Dani, there are just some things you’ll have to discuss first with your family.”

“Fine, then.”

She jumped up, banged off the television, so aggravated she could have pulled books off the shelves and thrown them in handfuls at the too-controlled, too-appealing man who’d invaded her space. “I’ll find out the rest on my own. I don’t need your help or your cooperation.”

She headed for the kitchenette and dumped dishes into the dishwasher, put the cap on the olive oil and tucked it back on the appropriate shelf. Zeke continued to stare out the living-room window. He wasn’t like Ira, who talked all the time, or Nick or her father, who’d try to sneak off when she was irritated. He wasn’t like any of her male business associates, who treated her with reserve, and he wasn’t like the men who worked for her at Pembroke Springs, and he wasn’t like-he was nothing like-the men she’d dated over the years, who’d talk her out of feeling miserable and take the credit when she was feeling happy.

They’d just stand there when they knew she was mad.

But Zeke didn’t work for her and he wasn’t a business associate and he wasn’t a relative and he wasn’t a date.

So what was he?

A complication, she thought, shutting the dishwasher. A man who scared her just for the very questions he presented and the doubts he created. Not just about her mother, Mattie, what was happening in Saratoga. About herself.

She hit the start switch on the dishwasher and wiped off the counter. She had no intention of letting him clean up after he’d cooked dinner.

“You’re welcome to stay.” Her tone wasn’t exactly invitational. “Talk to the pigeons all night if you want. I’m out of here.”

He hadn’t moved a millimeter. “Where are you going?”

She made it all the way down the hall to the elevator.

Then he was there beside her, silent and so controlled.

She couldn’t not look at him. If the rest of him wasn’t giving away a thing, his eyes were. They told her he did care. They told her he, too, was afraid of what he’d stirred up by coming to Saratoga-of what he’d find there.

They were so different, she and this man from Cedar Springs, Tennessee.

“You need to rest,” he said. His tone was neither patronizing nor demanding, but simply observational. Probably it didn’t take any great insight into her character to notice that she was ready to collapse. She could feel the exhaustion curling up her spine, dragging her down. Only tension kept her on her feet.

She banged the down button. Somewhere within the bowels of the building, she could hear the elevator creak and groan. “It’s so frustrating.”

“Keep your focus on the present.”

“Is that your professional advice?” she asked, not meaning to sound so sarcastic.

“My personal advice. I’ve had a few extra days to adjust to asking the kinds of questions you’re asking.”

His eyes had become distant again, a closed window to a part of him she could no longer deny she very much wanted to see and understand. What was he like inside?

“I want answers, Zeke.”

“So do I.”

“Talk to me.”

But he merely stood there.

The elevator clunked to a stop at her floor, and the doors slid open. “I should get back to Saratoga and see my father-and I need to apologize to Mattie. I was pretty hard on her. I’ve never gotten mad at her like that.”

“Maybe she’s relieved you finally did. Now she’s merely mortal in your eyes.”

The elevator doors were closing. Dani reached to stick her arm in and stop them, but Zeke touched her wrist, just below her slowly healing bruise. Awareness sizzled inside her. She forced herself to remember the stolen key, ransacked room 304, her father. They weren’t coincidences.

“You wouldn’t get to see your father until morning.” Zeke’s voice was raspy and low; he rubbed the soft, sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. “Hospitals do have their rules.”